On 2023-08-07, Jay F. Shachter <j...@m5.chicago.il.us> wrote: > > Esteemed Colleagues: > > How do I get OpenBSD to recognize my wireless network device? > > When I install OpenBSD on my computer, the second-to-last thing the > installer says, is that I have a multiprocessor machine, so it will > use bsd_mp instead of bsd. Then there is a very long pause -- so long > that you are nearly certain that the installer is hung, and you will > have to power-cycle. Then the installer reports that fw_update has
IMHO this can be an annoyingly long time especially if you have a slow internet connection, but last time I asked there were objections to adding more lines of output to the installer to show what it's doing there. > obtained intel and inteldrm, and congratulates me on a successful > installation. When I reboot and log in for the first time, fw_update > reports that it has just obtained uvideo and vmm (why it did not do > this at the end of the installation, when it obtained intel and > inteldrm, is never explained). Firmware is installed based on devices that show up in dmesg. The install kernel has limited device support (no point wasting space on devices which are no use to the installer) - no uvideo/vmm - so the firmware installer is unaware of the devices until you boot onto a full kernel. (The GPU is recognised by the installer without having a full driver for it based on other IDs; on some machines it's important to have this available from first boot of a kernel with the driver). > At this point, after two opportunities to obtain the firmware that it > needs, I would expect that my computer's operating system would > recognize my computer's wireless network device (which, according to > the output of "pciconf -v", is a Broadcom BCM4313, Vendor ID: 14e4, > Product ID: 4727). Unsupported wireless adapter. Your easiest option is probably an 802.11n (*not* 11ac) USB device, as most are supported. It will probably be "ok" though not great. Swapping to a different card is likely to give better results (generally faster, more stable, and able to use the proper antennas in the laptop, usually around the display, rather than a tiny pcb trace antenna) - but given the age and type of machines that usually came supplied with BCM4313 I don't expect it's worth putting that much effort into it.
